My COWBOYS & ALIENS review

COWBOYS & ALIENS is such a great title, the movie doesn’t have to be good. People will see it based on the concept alone.

This movie could almost be called GENERIC SUMMER MOVIE. It has all the most popular elements of every summer movie from the past 30 years -- it's loud, it has aliens, it has Harrison Ford, it's based on a comic book -- what more do you need?

COWBOYS & ALIENS is basically plotless and doesn‘t make a lot of sense, like all summer action movies. I really don't have much to say about it. The special effects are impressive, and the aliens are cool. I guess it's a harmless way to spend two hours.

I usually hate it when a British actor tries to do an American accent, but Daniel Craig acquits himself well here.

I saw the movie in 2-D but I felt like I should have been wearing 3-D glasses because things kept reaching out at the screen at me.

I guess to me the most interesting thing about seeing the movie was seeing the preview for the movie BATTLESHIP (based on the old kids' game from the 1970s.) BATTLESHIP the movie looks way different than anyone thought it would. It actually looks like it should be called TRANSFORMERS 4. I still don’t want to see it, but at least it doesn’t have that douche-bag Shia LaBouf in it!

My review of the CAPTAIN AMERICA movie - SPOILERS!

I’ve been reading CAPTAIN AMERICA comics for about 40 years, and I have to say, I was disappointed by the new CAPTAIN AMERICA movie. ( I know -- big surprise, right?)
Mostly I was upset by too many changes to the comic book continuity. My feeling is that half the changes worked and half of them didn’t, and the half that didn’t work were so vastly different from the comic, they were a huge distraction to me.
Among the big changes: 1) the government initially using Cap as a propaganda tool instead of as the Super-Soldier he was created to be; 2) the origin of the Red Skull; 3) the relationship between Cap and Bucky; 4) the relationship between Cap and Peggy Carter; 5) the role of Tony Stark’s father in Cap’s origin; 6) the relationship between Cap & Nick Fury; 7) the origin of HYDRAl and 8) the way Cap gets frozen in ice. (I’m not giving anything away -- anyone who has read a Marvel Comic in the last 5 decades knows that Cap gets frozen in ice at the end of WWII!)
My biggest problem is that the movie doesn’t show Cap fighting any Nazis. This was apparently done in the name of political correctness, which I still don’t understand. The filmmakers didn’t want kids to know what Nazis were? They were afraid if offending Germans? This summer’s X-MEN FIRST CLASS had scenes of Nazis torturing Magnetos parents and then Magneto roaming the world as a Nazi-hunter years later. Why is it that it’s okay to show Nazis in the X-Men movies but not in CAPTAIN AMERICA -- a movie set in World War II?
I really wanted to see Cap punching out the real Hitler -- not some goofy Hitler impersonator in a stage show. Having Cap fight the hordes of HYDRA makes this movie look a lot like a GI JOE sequel. (Try watching GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA just before you watch the CAP movie, and you’ll see some awkward similarities.)
Chris Evans does a nice job as Cap, overcoming any lingering ill will fans may have had toward his cocky Human Torch from the FANTASTIC FOUR films. He must be a better actor than I thought he was, because not once in this movie did I think of the Human Torch.
The love story in this movie doesn’t work at all, mostly because the Peggy Carter character is a little too modern. A hard-hitting British woman who seems to be in some high-ranking position in the America military -- this character would not have existed in World War II. This is a bigger fantasy than even CAPTAIN AMERICA himself. I’m sorry, I just didn’t buy it.
I realize the filmmakers had to get a love story in there somewhere, but this one really felt forced. To me, a far more interesting story would have been if Peggy was a girl from Cap’s old neighborhood in Brooklyn, maybe she loved him when she was skinny, then she sees him after his transformation and has to deal with her scrawny boyfriend becoming a super-hero!
Hugo Weaving does a fine job as the Red Skull, even if you never get to see him interact with Hitler and you’re never quite sure exactly what his plans are. (At least the Skull gets to be German in this film, not like the Italian Red Skull from the lame 1990 Cap movie!) As far as I can piece it together, the Skull hopes to harness the power of the Cosmic Cube, the mightiest weapon on Earth, to… uh… blow up some American cities? I liked it better in the comics when the Skull used the cube to reshape the world in his own image. That was a better use of the cube, I thought. (Maybe they’re saving that for THE AVENGERS!)
I liked the way they included Arnim Zola in the movie, but we never got to see him in his robot form. I guess they are saving that for the AVENGERS, too.
I liked the way the movie established Steve and Bucky Barnes as friends  -- that was a fresh take on Bucky, and more in keeping with the recent portrayal of the character. In these sophisticated times, giving Cap a teen sidekick just wouldn’t have worked.

The fate of Bucky in the movie is very different from the comics. I’m not so sure that a train is a better vehicle than a plain when showing the demise of a major character. In the comic, the scene of Cap failing to save Bucky from the plane crash is one of the most iconic images of all time. Surely the filmmakers could have recreated it faithfully here.
The scenes where Cap goes on a USO tour made the least sense to me. The government invests all this time and money in making Steve Rogers the greatest super-soldier the world has ever known -- and then, instead of sending him off to war, they use him to drum up sales for war bonds. I liked Cap’s origin better in the comics, where as soon as Steve Rogers become Cap, he is sent undercover as a bumbling army private by day so he can go kick some Nazi butt by night.
Samuel L. Jackson has a couple of lines at the end in his role as Nick Fury, the glue that holds the Marvel movie universe together. Unfortunately, his presence here means we don’t get to see Fury in action along with the Howling Commandos in the WW II scenes. It seems kind of blasphemous to have the Howling Commandos without Nick Fury, but such is the way of the world in the Marvel movie universe, which is a bizarre amalgam of both the original Marvel universe and the Ultimate Universe.
As far as the part where Cap gets frozen -- again, the way they did it in the comics was better. In the original version, Cap is lost at sea and presumed dead. In the new movie, he crashes a huge jet, seemingly intact,  into the ocean. And in 70 years, no one ever thinks to look for it.
Look, we all know that in real life, a man can’t be frozen in an iceberg for decades and come out alive. Since we’re dealing with a  very implausible situation,  they could have just stuck with the original version of the story instead of making it even more implausible.
Just like the first SPIDER-MAN movie, the first half of this movie is very slow, and could have really benefited from getting the title character into costume and into action faster.
The movie ends with a tease  of the AVENGERS movie, which looks kind of cool, but both HAWKEYE and the BLACK WIDOW seem woefully out of place among real super-heroes who actually have powers… Also: no HULK in the AVENGERS teaser? Come on! Where is ol’ Greenskin?
It will be very interesting to see how it all comes together.
Overall I rate CAPTAIN AMERICA behind X-MEN FIRST CLASS and THOR as far as this year’s super-hero movies. Oh well. At least it was better than GREEN LANTERN!

THE ENDING OF SUPER 8 MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL!

By Barry Dutter

The movie SUPER 8 bears remarkable similarities to E.T. Both movies are about an alien who just wants to go home. (I half-expected to hear Neil Dimaond singing "Turn on your heart light...")

The big difference is that the alien in ET is friendly and lovable, but the alien in SUPER 8 is sometimes good, sometimes evil, depending on his mood.

SUPER 8 presents its monster as an underdog. He’s been imprisoned for decades by the US government, and all he wants to do is rebuild his spaceship and get the heck off of Earth. At the beginning of the film, a scientist sets the alien free by crashing his truck into the train that is carrying it (The scientist's actions presumably kill all the people who were on board the train at the time, but this is kind of glossed over in the name of science.)

At this point, the alien begins a several day terror spree. He goes into hiding, coming out only at night to 1) kidnap random people and 2) steal car engines and other metal objects. We later find out he is stealing the car engines so he can acquire enough metallic objects to build his own makeshift space ship.

And he is kidnapping the people because… why exactly? I’m not sure. The film never makes that clear. In one scene, the alien is shown killing and eating a human. In another scene, the alien is shown being talked out of killing a young boy by the boy’s persuasive speech.

So I guess the alien is evil if it finds you threatening, but if you are friendly to it and talk to it in a calm voice, it will let you go free. That makes some kind of sense, but it still doesn’t explain why the alien was kidnapping random people in the first place.

What did it hope to gain by doing so? Snacks for the long ride home?

Just like in ET, the alien finds the means to escape just as the army is closing in. In SUPER 8, the alien uses its telekinetic powers to summon all the metal in the area to build his spaceship and get away.

But if the alien has the power to do this, why didn’t it do this on the night of the train crash? Surely there was enough metal in the train wreck to provide the alien with enough metal to build its ship.

I enjoyed SUPER 8 overall, until the ending, which didn’t make any sense to me. It reminded me of the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Like Dorothy in that movie, the alien apparently had the power to go home all along. It chose not to, because doing so would have ended the movie an hour earlier.

I’ve heard JJ Abrams admit in interviews that he is not that great of a writer. I have to agree with him. As a director, he’s an excellent imitator of young Stephen Spielberg. As a writer, he has yet to impress me.

As my brother pointed out, SUPER 8 is basically ET meets CLOVERFIELD. And it's a bit soon for Abrams to be doing homages to his own movies.

X-MEN FIRST CLASS REVIEW

X-MEN FIRST CLASS REVIEW

By Barry Dutter
As always, instead of doing a straight review of the movie, I’m just going to list some random thoughts/observations…

1) So it was Magneto’s idea for Mystique to walk around naked all the time, eh? Erik, you dirty dog!

2) The movie has two surprise cameos, one of which was ruined for me by the L.A. Times and has popped up elsewhere online. The other is more of a secret, so I won’t say who it is, but she was a big surprise.

3) Michael Fassbinder is so good as Magneto, he blows away every other actor on the screen. This may be the best performance by any actor in any X-Men movie. The actor who plays Prof. X is pretty good, but his part is more whiney. He spends most of the second half of the movie trying to convince Magneto not to do things that you know Mags is gonna do anyway, so Prof. X comes across as pretty ineffectual for a guy who can read minds and control people’s thoughts.

4) The new origin for how Prof. X got in the wheelchair is pretty good, much better than the one that was shown in the comics back in the 60s.

5) If they were going to introduce a new character who has wings like a dragonfly, wouldn’t it have made more sense to call her Dragonfly, instead of Angel? (I mean, the X-Men movie Universe already has a male hero called Angel, and the Marvel Universe does have a female villain called Dragonfly!)

6) Usually whenever I see a movie based on a comic book, I gripe about all the changes they made for the movie. With this movie, my only gripe is that the Beast is supposed to have big hands and big feet, and in this movie, he only had big feet. I know, pretty minor gripe, right?

7) Of course, my other little gripe is that I still want to see a movie with the REAL First Class of X-Men: Beast, Angel, Iceman, Cyclops and Marvel Girl. I guess I will have to wait a while for that one.

8) In the first X-MEN movie, there was a scene where Wolverine referred to Sabretooth as a “pussy.” I get that he was making a cat joke, but still, it was jarring to see a Marvel Comics super-hero use a dirty word. In this movie, one of the heroes uses the “F” word, and it feels so out of place, I wish they had gone with a different line. (The character could have said “Get lost!” or “Beat it!” and the scene would have been just as effective.) In over 50 years of X-Men comics, none of the characters has ever cursed. Why do it here? Just to be cool?

9) Jennifer Lawrence has really grown into quite a cutie. Her Rogue even outshines January Jones as Emma Frost in the hotness dept, and that is not an easy thing to do!

10) I liked the 60s setting. It reminded me of a James Bond movie. Makes me think that all future James Bond movies should be set in the 60s! And they should get the director of X-MEN FIRST CLASS to direct them!

11) I had heard that this movie is set in an alternate universe, apart from all the other X-MEN movies. But it seems to dovetail nicely into the other movies. I didn't notice any glaring discrepancies.

12) This was easily the best film of the series. Clearly producer/co-writer Bryan Singer needs to stay far away from SUPERMAN and just focus on the X-MEN instead!

FUNNIEST EDITED FOR TV MOVIE LINES

FUNNIEST EDITED FOR TV MOVIE LINES



Compiled by Barry Dutter

Don't you love how they edit out the curse words when an R-rated movie is shown on network TV? Here are some of my favorite edits.


1) SAMUEL L. JACKSON's classic line from SNAKES ON A PLANE: "I have had it with these MOTHER-FUCKING SNAKES on this MOTHER-FUCKING PLANE!” becomes “I have had it with these MONKEY-FIGHTING SNAKES on this MONDAY TO FRIDAY PLANE!”


2) JOHN GOODMAN in THE BIG LEBOWSKI: "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" The TV version says "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!"


3) In FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, the words “fucking jerk” are replaced with “Fuzzy nerd” and “He’s been STONED since the third grade” becomes “He’s been STRANGE since the third grade.”)


4) DIE HARD 2: “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker” becomes “Yippee ki-yay, Mr. Falcon,” which is funny because nobody in the movie is named “Mr. Falcon”


5) From THE USUAL SUSPECTS: “Hand me the keys, you fucking cocksucker” becomes “Hand me the keys, you fairy godmother.”


6) Al Pacino in SCARFACE “This town is like a great big pussy, just waiting to get fucked.” becomes ““This town is like a great big chicken, just waiting to get plucked.”


7) Also from SCARFACE: “Where’d you get that beauty scar, tough guy? Eating pussy?” becomes ““Where’d you get that beauty scar, tough guy? Eating pineapple?”


8) SAM JACKSON in PULP FICTION: “My eyes are wide fucking open” becomes “My eyes are wide focused open”


9) From LETHAL WEAPON: "That's a real badge, I'm a real cop and this is a real FUCKING Gun" becomes "That's a real badge, I'm a real cop and this is a real FIRING Gun!"


10) From SMOKEY & THE BANDIT: Jackie Gleason’s favorite curse word, “sumbitch” becomes “scum bum’ in the TV version.


11) In DIE HARD 3, SAMUEL L. JACKSON (him again!) calls BRUCE WILLIS “a racist MOTHERFUCKER" in the movie, but on network TV it becomes “a racist MELON FARMER!” Right. Because most melon farmers are racist!


12) THE ALL-TIME CLASSIC: From THE EXORCIST: “Your mother sucks cocks in hell” becomes, “Your mother sews socks that smell!”

TOP 5 SNL JOKES & SKETCHES THAT SNUCK PAST THE CENSORS

By Barry Dutter

1) The classic “Lord & Lady Douche Bag” sketch from 1980. The basic premise of the sketch, written by Buck Henry, was that various nobles meet for a dinner party in the year 1730. Each person at the party has something named after them. Lord Salisbury has the Salisbury Steak. The Earl of Sandwich has the Sandwich. And Lord & Lady Douche Bag have, well, an invention that they don’t want to leak just yet. Never before have the words “douche bag” been used so many times on one of the Big Three networks.

2) In a Monica Lewinsky skit from the 1990s, the actress playing Monica Lewinsky orders a Bartles & James in a bar. She then explains to her friends, “I love BJ‘s.” And anyone watching at home thinks of Bill Clinton and smiles.

3) The “Colonel Angus” sketch (2009). Christopher Walken plays a Civil War soldier who goes by the name of “Colonel Angus” -- a name that sounds an awful lot like a certain term describing a sexual act that is greatly enjoyed by women. This is a one-joke skit, with that one joke repeated about 20 times -- until we learn the Colonel’s first name is Enal -- at which point, we get a bunch of jokes about Enal Angus, which sounds like another sex act approached from the opposite end.

4) The Sofa Kings Sketch (2007): When I lived in Florida years ago, there was a bar called “Sofa Kings. “ The tagline for the bar was that this place is “sofa king good,” a play on the phrase “so fucking good.” In 2007, SNL decided to take that old schoolyard joke and make a skit about it. Another one-joke skit, seemingly done just to see if they could sneak it past the censors. They succeeded. SNL had similar success with Alec Baldwin’s Schwetty Balls sketches and Betty White talking about her moist muffins.

5) The all-time classic from 1977: “Planet of the Men vs. the Planet of the Women,” a skit about a battle of the sexes -- in space! Aboard the penis-shaped male spaceship: Host Hugh Hefner as Captain Macho. Dan Aykroyd as Lt. Testosterone. John Belushi as Corporal Hardin. Over in the donut-shaped women’s ship, Gilda Radner is Lt. Areola..... Well, you get the idea. The ships collide with the male ship penetrating the female ship, in a rather phallic manner. The women are disappointed with the size of the male ship, but they hope the men will attack again in half an hour. The men acknowledge that the female ship will never be the same again after they penetrate it, and they think about making another go at it. But all the men fell asleep before that happens. It’s funny because it’s true!

My THOR REVIEW

By Barry Dutter

Rather than write a traditional review, I decided to just list a bunch of random thoughts. Overall I liked the movie, but as a longtime comics fan, naturally I had my quibbles…

1) It’s possibly the best Marvel movie after the first IRON MAN.

2) Chris Hemsworth is perfect for this role -- the best casting on a Marvel super-hero since Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. Hemsworth brings the right amount of strength, charm and dignity to the part. It’s nice to have a Marvel super-hero movie that doesn’t, at some point, treat the hero like a joke. (I will still never forgive Hollywood for such atrocities as: a pigeon pooping on the THING’s shoulder in FANTASTIC FOUR, SPIDER-MAN delivering pizzas in SPIDER-MAN 2, etc.)

3) The SHIELD agent character who was in IRON MAN 2 and appears in this movie, as well, is kind of bland. (I’m not talking about SAM JACKSON as NICK FURY -- he’s cool. I’m talking about the white guy. I can’t even remember his name!) They really should have tried to make this character more interesting -- perhaps basing him on an actual character from the comics. I mean, Dum Dum Dugan or Jasper Sitwell would be more interesting that this no-name pencil-pusher.

4)With Hemsworth, the newly buff CHRIS EVANS as CAPTAIN AMERICA, and RYAN REYNOLDS as GREEN LANTERN, this is the first summer ever where all the major super-heroes did not need to have muscles painted onto their costumes. Perhaps we’ve finally reached the end of the era of wimpy super-heroes that began with MICHEAL KEATON in BATMAN.

5) The movie should have been longer. I would have liked to have seen the story fleshed out more. I mean, THOR does not exactly have what you call, um, what do you call those things ... a plot! THOR is banished to Earth, he finds his hammer, big fight, the end. I would like to have seen an extended sequence with THOR trying to adjust to his new life on Earth.

6) The romance with Natalie Portman should have been given a lot more room. I mean, Thor’s feelings for Jane Foster are a crucial plot point -- the whole movie hinges on him falling in love with this girl -- and yet, we are never given any reason why he falls in love with her, other than the fact that she’s hot. Overall, the movie seems to have had about a half hour worth of story cut out of it. Guess we gotta wait for the DVD.


7) The HAWKEYE cameo redefined the word “gratuitous.”

8) It’s great that they showcased the FROST GIANTS, but I didn’t hear any mention of the FLAME GIANTS. I really feel they were slighted! Somewhere, SURTUR is not happy!

9) A couple of the shots of THOR flying reminded me of the first SUPERMAN movie from 1980 in terms of the quality of the SFX.

10) I got a little nervous when I saw that J. Michael Straczynski had come up with the story for this movie. After all, his major contribution to the THOR mythos is having the city of Asgard floating a mile above the Earth. Not one of his better ideas.

11) The recent Marvel movies seem to be hewing closer to the ULTIMATE versions of the Marvel heroes than the original versions. This means that SHIELD plays a huge part in every origin story, and the origins of HULK and CAPTAIN AMERICA are forever linked. I liked the origins from the 1960s better, when you didn’t have SHIELD sticking their noses in everything. I mean, in the original THOR origin, the guy just finds his hammer in the forest. He didn’t have to break into a SHIELD base to get it back. Basically the Marvel Comics of the 60s were about ordinary people coming to grips with fantastic powers. The Marvel Comics of the Ultimate Universe are about a super-secret government agency learning of the existence of various super-powered individuals and finding ways to contain and control them. It was a lot more fun before the government got involved.

12) If Odin strips THOR of all his powers before banishing him to Earth, how come THOR is able to summon a storm when he sneaks into the SHIELD camp?

13) I like that Stan Lee’s character this time around is listed as “STAN THE MAN” in the credits.

14) I get that the filmmakers were trying to do a “King Arthur/Sword in the Stone” homage with Thor’s hammer, but really, it was not necessary to have the hammer embedded in the ground. The whole point of Thor’s hammer is that no one can lift it except Thor when he is at his most worthy. Rather than having people try to pry Thor’s hammer out from a rock, they could have just had people trying to pick the hammer up off the ground. (Remember, not even the HULK can lift THOR’s hammer off the ground!) Screenwriters think they are being clever when they take an old myth and try to tie it in to another myth. It’s not clever, it’s just lazy.

15) The DESTROYER kicked ass! He looked exactly the way I remember him from the comics. Well done!

16) Thor overhears a trucker mention a fallen satellite in the desert and instantly knows this must be his hammer. Wha? Huh? How does Thor even know what a satellite is?

17)  Kudos to the Marvel marketing people for not using the slogan “It’s hammer time!” and for not using the M.C. Hammer song in the movie. (Look, when it came time to find a theme song for the IRON MAN movies, they just used an old Black Sabbath song called “Iron Man.” It didn’t exactly take a lot of originality to think of that one!)

18) The bit about Natalie P. hitting Thor twice with her SUV was a little too cutesy. Once was enough.

19) I don’t think that even a de-powered THOR could be taken out by a taser gun. After all, he was still strong enough to be hit twice by a car and walk away unscathed.

20) Are SHIELD agents so dumb that they will release a dangerous prisoner to anyone who wanders into their camp with a fake driver’s license? Very sloppy plotting.

21) Why does Thor copy IRON MAN’s pose on the movie poster?

22) It’s always fun to sit through the end credits of a Marvel movie to get to the bonus scene, but why do the credits have to be so long? Sheesh, that was a long wait!

23) The day after THOR premiered, the SyFy channel aired a cheesy, low-budget made-for-TV movie called ALMIGHTY THOR. Their THOR had blonde hair. Strange -- the THOR of Norse myth always had RED hair and a full red beard. How did SyFy ever get the idea of doing a blonde version of THOR?

24) All in all, Marvel’s THOR is a fun movie, and a solid introduction to the character to those unfamiliar with him. Now that we got the origin out of the way, next time, we can see him spending a lot more time with his cape and hammer!

25) When the cast of the AVENGERS movie was announced last year, my thought at the time was: Other than Robert Downey Jr., the rest of the cast is very low in star-wattage. With the release of THOR, and the rise of Jeremy Renner’s profile after his role in Ben Affleck’s THE TOWN, suddenly the cast of the AVENGERS is looking more and more impressive. Will Chris “Captain America” Evans have what it takes to lead these guys in the AVENGERS? We’ll find out next summer!